The Ten Commandments

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: HOW OUR MOST ANCIENT MORAL TEXT CAN RENEW MODERN LIFE
David Hazony
Scribner, 2010

Despite his career as a passionate justifier of Israeli oppression of Palestinians and denouncer of progressive thought, David Hazony has produced a serious reading of biblical themes that is both accessible and insightful. Hazony notes that the kind of love of God called for by the Hebrew Bible is an erotic love based on the human model, emphasizing the Bible’s pro-pleasure approach. Though Hazony’s book is lacking in intellectually adventurous and spiritual thinking, it does provide a very competent presentation of the traditional rabbinic approach to many important issues. Read it along with our “Ten Commitments,” Leonard Felder’s The Ten Challenges, and Joan Chittister’s The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart — you’ll get a much deeper understanding of why those ten speech acts at Sinai have played such an important role in Western civilization.

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